Xbox Controller Mod Question

Hi,
I read your article and I would like to do the same thing you have donehttp://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=28
with the USB mod. I went to the store and bought some Rainbow Wire from Radio Shack. Here are the details of the wire I got.

4 conductor
24 gauge
solid <— is this a problem?

the wire that the usb uses is not solid and I just want to be sure before
proceeding with my mod. I appreciate any input you can give me.

Do I need to use different wire?

Thanks for your help
Pete

Here’s my response:

Pete:

You CAN solder on a wire extention if you really really want to. This article was written several years ago when USB was rather new, and there weren’t many USB accessories.

You can probably save yourself a lot of headache by purchasing a longer internal USB header from a used hardware shop. There are many USB extentions and conversion cables available today, for both internal and external use.

But if you are determined to solder on an extention, you can use nearly any copper wire of virutally any gauge. The voltages are so low (5V at the max) that any gauge is fine… it doesn’t really matter (from a conductivity standpoint) if the wire is solid or threaded, although threaded will be easier to solder together.

If the wire colors don’t match up exactly, just do the best you can. As long as the beginning of Wire A matches the end of Wire A, then you’re fine.

To make a clean job, I would use some small heatshrink over the solder point, which will also prevent the wires from touching each other. If you don’t have any heatshrink you can use electrical tape (or Scotch tape if you’re really ghetto).

I’m not sure how familiar you are with soldering, so I’ll just go over it…

Make sure you “tin” both wires to be connected by taking a bit of solder and let the threaded wire soak it up. Then connect the two tinned pieces, and lightly touch them with a soldering iron and they should melt together, Slide over your heatshrink and heat it with a hair dryer, heat gun, (or lighter if you’re really ghetto). If you use black heatshrink then the char won’t show up from the lighter ;)

I hope this helps, and thanks for reading!

Alan is a web architect, stand-up comedian, and your friendly neighborhood Grammar Nazi. You can stalk him on the Interwebs via
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